Sibyl James:
THE ADVENTURES OF STOUT MAMA

Papier-Mache Press
795 Via Manzana
Watsonville CA, 95076

131 pp., $14.00

Stout Mama is unrepentant--she worries
about her weight, won't quit smoking , adores Che Guevara
and Mick Jagger, is fiercely independent but broods
routinely about how others perceive her. She is a
woman who'll give up nothing she loves. She's tastefully
reckless, self-knowing without being self-centered,
literary but no dweeb, sassy and direct.

Stout Mama's adventures are composed in short sketches--tight
prose at once worldly and lighthearted, filled with
the gestures of America and its cultural iconography:
partial recognition and romantic fantasy on the rush
hour freeway, WD-40, that "fine line between sexist
macho and the mockery of sexist macho," high school
sex education lectures, the foibles of teaching English
in foreign countries. The charm of the well-writ anecdote
is ever-present, and as you read these short tales
you'll chuckle gleefully and reach for the phone to
pass the word along.--Joel Lipman